This week we’ve been very excited to see the foundation framing go up. A crew of four measured and created the frames, then brought in 14 dump trucks of dirt to create part of the foundation.
From there they began creating trenches for the concrete “beams” that will be poured next week, although I want to call them footers for obvious reasons. They seem to run along what will be walls some of the time.
John, ever the treasure seeker, has loved searching through the dirt that they have trenched out to find arrowheads and other native american artifacts. He promises to add a blog post showcasing some of his finds.
Maybe it is obvious to everyone else, but I had to ask why they brought the dirt in. By compacting the dirt, they will use less concrete on top. And dirt is, of course, much cheaper than concrete…
It’s challenging to get a sense of scale. Aspects of it seem huge and other areas don’t feel that large. The foundation is much larger than the house interior because we have lots of covered porches designed into our house. The idea is that you can (almost always) sit outside on one side of the house or the other, depending upon where the sun is and whether you want to be in the sun or shaded from it.
Hopefully we earned some brownie points with our foundation guys. Arturo is supposed to be the best (as our road guy told us) and everyone wants his crew to do their house. I brought a bag of homemade Pumpkin Spice muffins to the site for the crew as a thank you for working on our house. It was a Trader Joe’s Gluten Free mix, but they don’t need to know all that… Next week when they begin pouring the concrete, I will have to come up with another treat to say thank you.
While we were at the home site, taking pictures (me) and searching for treasures (John), our first big rig with materials arrived. Rebar! The rest of this week and early next week will be creating the rebar structure and plumbing in the “beams”. We also found a good site downhill and away from the beautiful oak trees for the septic system to run. Ahh, the joys of building in the country.
Alas, we must pull ourselves away from the home site for a few days as we travel back North for the weekend, so it will be exciting to see these materials in place in the foundation of the house.
So let me know if you’ve ever built a house (we certainly have not) – was this part of the process easy or not? And did you bring treats to your crews? I need ideas for treats and ways to say thank you to them. As John says, for them, it’s just another job, but for us – it’s our forever home! Thanks for stopping by and would love to see your ideas for treats!
Hugs, Libby